A little practitioner back ground on “ME”… I have never considered myself to be any sort of specialist! Nope… what I have come to realize is that folks who seek out my services are usually disappointed in allopathic medical routes – especially when the round after round of prescriptions that are recommended appear to merely mask their symptoms imprisoned in their body. They seek me out for dietary reform, usually because they have found out that food has something to do with their issues and physical symptoms. The light bulb starts to burn brighter as they realize that whatever illness or health issue they are battling didn’t just decide that hey, Suzie Whatsherface looks like a good person to set up house keeping inside of, they have realized something that has been occurring on a consistent basis had to have some sort of role to play in why they feel like they feel or why they are sick!
Many seek me out with noble intentions, willing to follow some nutritional advice and willing to try to experience better health through dietary and lifestyle changes. Those folks are for obvious reasons easier to work with.
However, the average peep is more reluctant to change the diet routine they have followed all their lives. They are not aware that nearly all bad food habits are actually “stimulation habits” that is, the body has almost automatically found out what makes it feel better for a mere half hour or so and what will mask the depression and fatigue for a short blink of time. Some folks will eat a good amount of salt, others reach for their meat washed down with their choice of alcoholic beverages, while others well their go-to relief food of choice is sweets or a combo of foods that will prove to add to their actual health issues, not realizing that some of those very cravings are pointing to various nutrient issues that their bodies are actually deficient in.
Then when I take away their stimulation , they feel weak and depressed, they may get headaches and/or other unpleasant physical side-effects for a while as their body adjusts to the new food intake routine and the toxic overload is being taken to the proverbial curb. I actually had a client who sent me an email about 4 days into their program and the body of the email read only this: I LOVE MY PRACTITIONER, I LOVE MY NUTRITIONIST, I HATE THIS FOOD ROUTINE! with a bunch of emoji hearts to follow. Sometimes, it’s a love/hate relationship… I try to warn my clients that some not so pleasant symptoms can jump to the forefront. This is usually that make or break moment as some clients decide that this lifestyle/nutritional reform just isn’t their cup of tea. They came for immediate relief and instead initially feel worse. So they return to their stimulation habits. It is a tragic decision, yet its one I cannot fight!
The other part of what I offer when I work with someone is I start them on the road called “understanding how MY body actually works”. Some may ask questions, but most don’t seek to understand the inner workings, and the truth is most practitioners in their practices deal day in and day out with folks who are unthinking and who treat their bodies – which I believe to be the most priceless of ones possessions, with about the same reckless abandon of a toddler breaking in a new toy. I ran across an old article from Life magazine from (December 7, 1962) that said:
“The body… runs on food and oxygen much as an auto runs on gasoline and oxygen. But right there the comparison ends. If it is not to stall or sputter, the auto must be fed exactly what it needs just when it needs it. The body’s fuel system, on the other hand, is subject to the whimsical tastes and cravings of its proprietor. It can handle extra food when it is already full and can go without when it is empty. And it must tolerate surprise doses of gin, smoke and really hot chili. It does this heroic job remarkable well… Though people often think of the stomach as a finicky, delicate organ, it is actually so rugged it can tolerate virtually anything that is not downright poisonous or corrosive.”
I laughed out loud in the library when I read this because I thought WOW, this is true, our digestive system is always accommodating, and can tolerate many strange and foreign things we throw down the hatch. Yet sooner or later folks, depending on its present state and hereditary health factors, guess what? IT BREAKS DOWN! We welcome almost with open arms dis-ease and illness. The body becomes invaded through our fuel processing system as well as its transportation system through the digestive channel, which when our digestive system (food processor) breaks down we have issues. When the fuel pump (heart) is impaired, heart disease stakes its rightful claim. If the digestive system is overloaded too long with improper food residues, the coronary arteries get hard and a heart attack can sign its name in our guest book. If the air you breathe is polluted, you get the additional signature in the guest book called respiratory issues. If the water you drink is loaded with chlorine and fluorine, your body can be irritated by the caustic action, that also interferes with how one’s thyroid is able to uptake proper amounts of iodine it needs. If your teeth are neglected, many suffer malnutrition because truth be told you can’t eat a wide range of healthy foods if you cannot “CHEW” it properly so one has to avoid certain hard to chew foods.
The other hard to swallow truth is even with an abundance of GOOD foods to choose from at all grocery stores, most folks rarely choose those. They choose pre-cooked in a box breakfast foods, cookies, donuts, lets swallow those with a hot cup of java to get our morning rolling, or let’s have some white bread and toss in some thick gravy to stick to the ribs, ummmmmmm these are the breakfasts of champions? If we are going to choose to exist on lifeless, over processed, insecticide sprayed foods: saturated with chemicals, then add coffee, tea, alcohol, chocolate, sweetened carbonated drinks, medicate an exhausted system with “ENERGY” drinks that are pure chemicals too, and we get MAD when we are told we have a disease, or any other serious health issue. We act like we didn’t deserve it, yet if we hit replay and go back over the use and abuse so to speak, and if we are willing to be honest with ourselves; our choices all but invited in the issue.The truth is if we treated our cars like most do their bodies, their cars would be in the junk yard.
I wrote another piece called “Your body: A do it yourself repair shop”, but if your repair shop (body) doesn’t have the proper tools to work with why are you shocked that NO work has been done? The truth is this isn’t something that has just popped on the scene in the past 50 yrs. either, A Frenchman, Constantin Volney, observed the diet of farmers in New England 164 years ago, He termed the following menu “deplorable”:
“In the morning at breakfast they douse their stomachs with a quart of hot water impregnated with tea or so slightly with coffee that it is mere colored water; and they could swallow almost without thinking hot bread half-baked, toast soaked in butter, cheese of the fattest kind, slices of salt or hung beef, ham, etc., all of which is nearly insoluble. At dinner they have boiled pastes under the name of puddings, and their sauces even for roast beef are melted butter; then potatoes and turnips swimming in hog’s lard, butter or fat. Under the name of pie or pudding, their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste, never sufficiently baked.”
Guess what the top job in that era was; who were the folks making the big bucks?… Those that made dentures, yep false teeth, and they were skillfully made from hickory wood, and they are PRIZED today by antique collectors, which cracks me up, not sure why someone wants a set of wooden false teeth hickory wood or not sitting on a shelf as a trinket, folks are unique I suppose.
One of mans most valuable possession has been his body’s ability to repair itself. Even animals have that built-in button for survival. Ever seen your dog go outside and eat grass? How about the wounded cat that licks its wounds clean; the lice-infested bird that wallows in dust? This primitive instinct, is at the root of all the healing arts; it is as ancient as life itself, as useful to the first folks as it is to us today. Why, then, have we forgotten it and left it behind us?
WHY DO WE MEMORIZE USELESS INFORMATION?
I’ve always asked myself this burning question? How come baseball fans can tell you the last World Series scores, some peeps can remember a poem that they were made to memorize in school as a child. I can still recite commercial jingles from the 1960’s and 70’s, or I remember School House Rock from Saturday morning cartoons as a child, I still to this day can SING the preamble to the Constitution. Some of the things we choose to memorize, that in truth is just stuff, it’s not likely being able to blurt out what the final score of the World Series in 1937 is going to prove useful in your everyday life, it may earn ya some bucks if that question comes up and your on the game show Jeopardy . Yet truth is many are baffled and confused about the own inner workings of their body, and when it’s under attack with pain, and breakdown, they can’t trouble shoot to lead them back to the cause. I use this analogy with clients all the time, that symptoms are not your enemy, they are your body’s built-in 911 call center, and your dash-board lights are flashing service something, and we ignore it or paste over it with something that will dull the light or better yet pull the fuse in the form of a pain-killer so we don’t feel it anymore, but that doesn’t mean you fixed the issue!
Most don’t take much interest in the inner workings of their body until they get sick, then they begin to study and take a crash course. We pay attention most of the time to what we see on the outside, the skin, hair, nails, our weight. I am always amazed when I get clients and by the way; this statement is one I hear frequently. “I DON’T HAVE TIME TO FEEL LIKE THIS”…. and I have to be honest with them and say well, this didn’t just jump on the scene yesterday, it’s been brewing beneath the surface for quite some time, you chose to ignore the early 911 signs. When you are holding water we call that edema, or you have a boil on the skin somewhere your body is forever fighting a biological batter for survival, that is what it is programmed to do, so these body responses are actually wise, the body’s way of calling for a complete quarantine, a thick barricade of inflammatory tissue to prevent the enemy (microbes or poisons) from spreading. Comfortable… NO, Genius, YES!
There is a process, inflammation triggers pain to prevent you from using something that is injured. Ever sprain an ankle? The first thing it does is swell up, then the swelling triggers pain, that’s so you don’t walk on it, but…. we take pain killers, and wrap it up so we can still use it and wonder why it takes so much longer to heal? Oh,, cuz we don’t have time for this….
DISEASE: CLASS 101
To understand disease you need to understand the way the living cell is comprised. Every walking, talking, breathing person on planet earth is composed of more than a trillion cells, and those cells are tremendously complicated in their mechanics. When the body becomes diseased, its cells turn abnormal in a variety of ways.
There are 2 classes of disease: Infectious which is caused by viruses or bacteria entering into the body; degenerative, caused, in general, by toxic substances manufactured by the disturbed organs themselves or by something foreign in our food or air. When your body is fighting against any of these, (the wonder of your body “fearfully and wonderfully made,) it’s job at the front line of defense, is to neutralize the offender.
According to Dr. Hans Selye in “The Stress of Life,” “pain, though an unwelcome intruder, serves a useful purpose. In disease, it is a warning given by nature to enforce rest as an aid to healing. It is also a warning that we may have suffered an injury. The nerve endings, receptors, transmit a message along the nerve pathways by electrical impulses to the brain, and we experience pain as a reaction. A variety of sensory stimuli can trigger pain: chemical; mechanical, such as twisting of a limb or pressure; thermal, as extreme cold, or heat; or electrical. When there is inflammation because of disease or injury, there is usually a combination of mechanical pressure and chemical irritation. Pain is always a warning that something is amiss; thus, to the physician, it is one of the most important symptoms of disease.”
Where I tend to differ with others in my field, some believe that certain aches, pains and debilitating health issues are part of our aging process…. I disagree that this is normal and what one should look forward too. I believe that real health is so much more. It is achieved by working with the laws of nature; and when we break those laws, we get sick. I don’t believe that being healthy is a certificate you are awarded by being born, I believe that to remain healthy one needs to be taking ACTIVE participation in living as healthy as they can. If one takes the time to do the research, it’s on the internet, you will find multiple articles that state the American people take more prescription medications and submit their bodies to more surgeries and vaccinations than that of any other country! Yet next to digestive issues which is what tops the charts for most doctor visits, the next would be anxiety about the state of ones health when they don’t feel good.
Sometimes folks want to hold my feet to the fire because I speak too blunt. Yet I personally believe that another reason folks stay in the dark is because too many topics are not addressed straight on. I’m going to toss this out in the open. Health is NOT something that comes in a capsule or something you can buy at the local drugstore. If you work with the natural laws of nature, I believe that ANYONE can AFFORD to be healthy. By God’s design our body is orchestrated and assembled as a near perfect machine in its inner and outer workings. So many actions that are taking place within that you are completely unaware of that the body performs all with one reason, to keep the body as healthy as possible. That alone is a miracle . Yet through I don’t know, maybe ignorance, fear and greed the proverbial monkey wrench is tossed into the workings of our miracle machine (body). The truth is “health is simple; few have it.” said Dr. Bieler.
BASIC FOOD FOUNDATION:
Let me share some of what I’ve learned and applied over the years. Take for example a vegetable from the squash family; Zucchini, it doesn’t offer a whole bunch of flavor it’s actually pretty bland tasting, yet its super rich in sodium. Sodium, is one of the most important elements our body needs to balance alkalinity. (No table salt will NOT fill the bill in performing the same need in the body). So zucchini is a super healthy veggie to add to one’s salad, steam, add to some mixed veggie dish, juice etc. Now if we move onto a key player in the body which is our liver, that organ is a storehouse of sodium, which sodium is needed to maintain the acid/alkaline equilibrium in our bodies. We cannot be healthy without this balance. So, that bland little zucchini is both food and medicine and if you know you have a sick liver, guess what is a good thing to start adding daily to ones food choices to restore an exhausted liver. ZUCCHINI….
When I’m working with clients I try to teach them how to incorporate foods therapeutically, and to get “back to basics”. I do not have any “miracle pills.” There are plenty of folks out there already peddling to those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired and want what is claimed to be a quick fix like it was yesterday; if that is what your heart is looking for, that’s probably where you will feel more comfortable. Do I ever recommend nutritional supplementation? Yes, I do, I also apply Orthomolecular Nutrition into the mix when I am working with a client. But the foundation is all based around food.
I Work with my clients and teach them how their body works, and help them glide into lifestyle changes that are going to do a body good! I equip them with tools, it’s up to THEM to apply those tools and LET their body do its own repair work! My focus is on that of “health” NOT on “disease”. It sounds silly to me, to tell a client how they can live WITH their illness, I’d rather help them understand what changes they can make so their body can by all rights get strong enough to kick it to the curb.
Typically when someone ends up scheduling a consultation with me; they feel sick, discouraged, they have tried to use different pills, shots and/or surgeries to keep their “sickness” under control. If I’ve done my job well, my clients learn to cooperate with and not work against nature, they get better and are better equipped in the future to help themselves. For many this takes TIME, the one thing many walk in saying, I can’t feel like this I don’t have TIME, yet if you don’t MAKE the TIME to address the issues, laying in a bed staring at the ceiling could be the next stop the train makes! Again, health is simple yet few have it, it takes a willingness to change what obviously isn’t working. If you keep doing what you’ve always done and are expecting a different result, I hear tell that’s the definition of “insanity.”
Hippocrates believed that a diseased body needed a period of rest, not only physical rest, but chemical rest, which he considered even more important. That Chemical rest could only be achieved by withholding food, which gives the organs in the body their opportunity to take anything that has accumulated as waste and do an internal house cleaning.
I love looking up and reading about Doctors from way back when… My 2nd career choice is called being lost for hours in the library, (don’t laugh it really could be a career.) So here are some old-time Doc’s I ran across while being LOST in the library… In England, Dr. Thomas Sydenham’s concept of disease was narrowed down into one sentence: “Disease, is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific matter.” Morbific, I love it, no one talks like that any more, but that word alone sure gets your attention. Dr. Sydenham lived in the 17th century, then there was another, a Dutchman who followed in Sydenhams footsteps, Hermann Boerhaave who said: “Disease is cured with the help of nature by neutralization and excretion of morbific matter.” There’s that word again, morbific… I think I could call getting lost for days in a library a career I could do this research on-line, but I LOVE the smell of the books inside the library! Sorry, side-tracked, moving right along….
Just prior to Louis Pasteur’s day was a Cellular pathologist Rudolf Virchow who was a pioneer in his field back in the day, and he stated: “If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat – diseased tissues rather than being the cause of diseased tissue: e.g. mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but don’t cause the pool to become stagnant.” Maybe re-read this paragraph…
The way our digestive system and the mechanics of how it performs its duties is obviously inherited, our eating HABITS are LEARNED habits. If you turn your toddler loose outside, will they not attempt to eat rocks, sticks and dirt? You as parents have to teach them that those are NOT foods. So why are we not doing the same by teaching them that fast food, refined sugar in the form of baked deserts are NOT healthy foods? Because we can’t just tell them we have to show them by what they SEE us eating! We lead by example not just by the words we speak. The big revelation folks is always that our ACTIONS carry more clout than our words!
Hippocrates – “The urgency of the body to regain its normal, healthy state. This is called vis medicatrix naturae – the healing power of nature which cures from within!”
It wasn’t until Louis Pasteur’s theory that disease came from outside the body, which for most folks is way easier to accept, because we are victims vs. a contributor to the issue. That the medical arena of that day shifted gears and began to rely more on drug therapy vs. lifestyle adaptation. It’s when people started to take the “why is this happening to me, or I didn’t ask for this” mentality. Yet, Dr. Bieler M.D. used to tell his patients, “Your pain, misery and illness result from your own dietary mistakes and drugs. You are suffering because you are filled with toxic wastes caused by your diet of poorly selected food filled with artificial flavorings, preservatives, synthetics, over-processed ingredients, too much stimulating food, too few natural vitamins from vegetables and fruits. If you selected wholesome natural foods, they were probably improperly prepared, boiled to death or overheated in oil, then covered with harmful condiments. The normal chemistry of your digestion is upset not only by these toxic wastes but also by harmful drugs, unhealthy living habits that include lack of exercise. So, highly poisonous materials toxins which have stagnated in your blood, impair the filters and eliminative organs, chief of which are the kidneys, liver bowels and skin.” That was back in 1965, and you know what, his practice was of such that Hollywood folks sought him out with their health issues, even when he tried to close his practice and retire, he ended up seeing patients in his home, he was a popular Doctor back in the day.
Early in my own practice, I studied Dr. Bieler’s methods intensely because it made sense! I made his first cornerstone towards building health the starting line. I start all my client’s on a juice fast. If my client’s stick to the routine properly some will actually experience that of a fever which the body uses to burn up waste so it can be eliminated.
We have 2 important organs that take out our trash. The liver and the kidneys. The liver eliminates typically through the bowels, and the kidneys dump through the bladder. There are times when the liver is congested and the waste makes it way into the blood, we don’t want it there. The kidney’s if they are inflamed, toxins are backed up in the blood too. So toxic dirty blood must get rid of these toxins or the person dies, so nature uses substitute avenues of elimination when this happens. The lungs are used as the backup removal system when the kidneys can’t keep up. So when folks tell me they have horrible respiratory issues, we work on strengthening the kidneys. They are elimination partners. The elimination partner for the liver is the skin, which when the overflow is being sent to the skin it results in breakouts like acne, eczema, and boils.
So, when there is a waste back up taking place in the body, and other organs are being used as emergency avenues of elimination, seeing disease as an unnatural elimination process in order to speed along elimination; a couple things need to take place for the person to start to feel better.
Folks, I am passionate about working with people, I love to teach, and empower others to take back control of their health and proper maintenance of their bodies. I know this post was a long one, but those that needed to read it, will in fact read it to the end. Even if that is only one person than that is the person I was prompted by God to write this for to offer them maybe an element of hope where they may feel hopeless in their quest for feeling healthier.
If I can be of service to you… you can go to http://www.mkt.com/harvested-health-llc and schedule a consultation either in person or I also do phone consults for those out of state.
Remember ” sharing is caring”, so if there is someone you know who may benefit from reading this post, feel free to share the link with them. You can also decide to “follow” my blog so you will be notified when I post new articles.
Healthfully yours,
Jodi Barnett N.D.
Orthomolecular Nutritional Coach, QFA Clinician
Harvested Health LLC
Harvested Health LLC. 